Shakespeare and the Globe.
Neither our Italian friend, however, nor Ben Jonson have given us any such glimpse as we would like to have of that keen-witted Warwickshire actor and playwright who, in the early years of James’ reign, is living off and on in London; having bought, within a few years—as the records tell us—a fine New Place in Stratford, and has won great favor with that King Jamie, who with all his pedantry knows a good thing when he sees it, or hears it. Indeed, there is some warrant for believing that the King wrote a commendatory letter to the great dramatist, of which Mr. Black, in our time, makes shadowy use in that Shakespearean romance of his,[6] you may have encountered. The novelist gives us some very charming pictures of the Warwickshire landscape, and he has made Miss Judith Shakespeare very arch and engaging; but it was perilous ground for any novelist to venture upon; and I think the author felt it, and has shown a timidity and doubt that have hampered him; I do not recognize in it the breezy freedom that belonged to his treatment of things among the Hebrides. But to return to “Judith’s father”—he is part proprietor of the Globe Theatre, taking in lots of money (old cronies say) in that way; was honored by the Queen, too, before her death, and had written that “Merry Wives of Windsor,” tradition says, to show Queen Bess how the Fat Falstaff would carry his great hulk as a lover.
We might meet this Shakespeare at that Mermaid Tavern we spoke of; but should look out for him more hopefully about one of the playhouses. Going from the Mermaid, supposing we were putting up there in those days, we should strike across St. Paul’s Churchyard, and possibly taking Paul’s Walk, and so down Ludgate Hill; and thence on, bearing southerly to Blackfriars; which locality has now its commemoration in the name of Playhouse Yard, and is in a dingy quarter, with dingy great warehouses round it. Arrived there we should learn, perhaps by a poster on the door, that the theatre would not open till some later hour. Blackfriars[7] was a private theatre, roofed over entirely and lighted with candles; also, through Elizabeth’s time, opening generally on Sundays—that being a popular day—hours being chosen outside of prayer or church-time; and this public dramatic observance of Sunday was only forbidden by express enactment after James came to the throne. At her palace, and with her child-players, Sunday was always Queen Elizabeth’s favorite day.
This Blackfriars was at only a little remove down the Thames from that famous Whitefriars region of which there is such melodramatic account in Scott’s story of Nigel, where Old Trapbois comes to his wild death. If we went to the Globe Theatre, we should push on down to the river—near to a point where Blackfriars Bridge now spans it—then, a clear stream free from all bridges, save only London Bridge, which would have loomed, with its piles of houses, out of the water on our left. At the water-side we should take wherry (fare only one penny) and be sculled over to Southwark, landing at an open place—Bankside—near which was Paris Garden, where bear-baiting was still carried on with high kingly approval; and thereabout, on a spot now swallowed in a gulf of smoked and blackened houses—just about the locality where at a later day stood Richard Baxter’s Chapel, rose the octagonal walls of the Globe Theatre, in which Mr. Shakespeare was concerned as player and part proprietor. There should be a flag flying aloft and people lounging in, paying their two-pence, their sixpences, their shillings, or even their half-crowns—as they chose the commoner or the better places. Only the stage is roofed over; perhaps also a narrow space all round the walls; from all otherwheres within, one could look up straight into the murky sky of London. There is apple-eating, nut-cracking, and some vender of pamphlets bawling “Buy a new booke;” such a one perhaps as that Horne Booke of Gulls—which I told you of, written by Dekker—would have been a favorite for such venders. Or, possibly through urgence of the Court Chamberlain, King James’ Counterblaste to Tobacco may be put on sale there, to mend manners; or Joshua Sylvester’s little poem to the same end, entitled Tobacco battered and the Pipes shattered about their Eares that idly idolize so base and barbarous a Weed, by a Volley of hot shot, thundered from Mount Helicon.
“How juster will the Heavenly God,
Th’ Eternal, punish with infernal rod
In Hell’s dark furnace, with black fumes to choak
Those that on Earth will still offend in Smoak.”
But hot as this sort of shot might have been, we may be sure that some fast fellows, the critics and æsthetes of those days, will have their place on the stage, sprawling there upon the edge, before the actors appear; criticising players and audience and smoking their long pipes; may be taking a hand at cards, and if very “swell,” tossing the cards over to people in the pit when once their game is over—a showy and arrogant largess.
Perhaps Ben Jonson will come swaggering in, having taken a glass, or two, very likely, or even three, in the tap-room of the Tabard Tavern—the famous Tabard of Chaucer’s tales—which is within practicable drinking distance; and Will Shakespeare, if indeed there, may greet him across two benches with, “Ah, Ben,” and he—tipsily in reply, with “Ah, my good fellow, Will.” Those prim young men, Beaumont and Fletcher, who are just now pluming their wings for such dramatic flights as these two older men have made, may also be there. And the play will open with three little bursts of warning music; always a prologue with a first representation; and it may chance that the very one we have lighted upon, is some special exhibit of that great military spectacle of “Henry V.” which we know, and all the times between have known; and it may be that this Shakespeare, being himself author and in a sense manager of these boards, may come forward to speak the prologue himself; how closely we would have eyed him, and listened:—
“Pardon, gentles all;
The flat, unraiséd spirit, that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O, the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts,
Into a thousand parts divide one man;
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth,
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times;
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass.”
And then the play begins and we see them all: Gloucester and the brave king, and Bedford, and Fluellen, and the pretty Kate of France (by some boy-player), and Nym, and Pistol, and Dame Quickly; and the drums beat, and the roar of battle breaks and rolls away—as only Shakespeare’s words can make battles rage; and the French Kate is made Queen, and so the end comes.
All this might have happened; I have tried to offend against no historic data of places, or men, or dates in this summing up. And from the doors of the Globe, where we are assailed by a clamor of watermen and linkboys, we go down to the river’s edge—scarce a stone’s-throw distant—and take our wherry, on the bow of which a light is now flaming, and float away in the murky twilight upon that great historic river—watching the red torch-fires, kindling one by one along the Strand shores, and catching the dim outline of London houses—the London of King James I.—looming through the mists behind them.
In our next chapter I shall have somewhat more to say of the Stratford man—specially of his personality; and more to say of King James, and of his English Bible.